Monday, January 24, 2005

Yesterday night, Yushchenko spoke with Andrei Kolesnikov, a Russian journalist writing for the Russian daily Kommersant, about his plans to announce the prime minister. But Kolesnikov was past the deadline at that point so he kindly allowed Ukrainska Pravda to publish this comment.

According to Kolesnikov, Yushchenko was choosing between two people last night and expected to make the announcement before his departure for Moscow today.

Then Kolesnikov asked that maybe Yushchenko would sign the appointment right on the plane. [Yushchenko] replied: "Oh, that's an interesting idea! Let's wait till the plane."

Yushchenko must be on the plane right now - according to Ukrainska Pravda, his departure was scheduled for 12:20 pm Kyiv time, which is something like 40 minutes ago.

According to Korrespondent.net, Yushchenko spoke with the journalists after his meeting with representatives of Ukrainian Christians at Kyiv's St. Sophia this morning and he said he'd make the decision about the prime minister "either today or tomorrow morning."

Obozrevatel adds that now it is reasonable to expect the announcement to be made during the news conference in Moscow at 7 pm today.

Funny how the focus has shifted: everyone's now busy trying to guess when Yushchenko is going to pick the premier, not who the premier might be... We are getting impatient.